James Franco Adapting Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God"

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James Franco, one of the hardest working men in Hollywood and guy whose interests run far broader and deeper than your average A-list hunk, has set his sights on adapting perhaps the darkest novel by one of America's greatest living writers.

Franco plans to direct a big-screen version of "Child of God," Cormac McCarthy's 1974 novel about a truly vile human being. From CormacMcCarthy.com, which called "Child of God" McCarthy's "most extreme challenge to the limits of propriety," comes this description:

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James Franco stars as a scientist who unwittingly creates an army of super apes. Opens Aug. 5. (Published Wednesday, May 30, 2012)

Its hero, Lester Ballard, is a murderer and necrophile, expelled from the human family and eventually living in underground caves, which he peoples with his trophies: giant stuffed animals won in carnival shooting galleries and the decomposing corpses of his several shot victims, male and female. This is the child of God.

The announcement, such as it is, came in response to a fan at the Toronto International Film Festival asking if rumors of Franco adapting McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" were true.

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“We shot a 20 minute test of it ("Blood Meridian") that turned out pretty well," said Franco, according to We Got This Covered. "We were gearing up to do the feature but that for various reasons is on hold, but we are going to make a movie based on his (Cormac McCarthy’s) third book, 'Child Of God.'”

We read this book nearly 20 years ago, and we can assure that it's as disturbing and haunting as the above paragraph suggests. Would it make a good film? Hard to say...

McCarthy has had three other novels made into movies, "All the Pretty Horses," "The Road" (which won McCarthy the Pulitzer Prize) and "No Country for Old Men," which earned the Coen Brothers Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture at the 2008 Oscars.

Published at 10:27 AM PDT on Sep 16, 2011 | Updated at 11:47 AM PDT on May 30, 2012